Slashgeo

Amazon A9 Stops Street-level Mapping

posted by Satri on Tuesday October 03, @08:36AM        Permalink  Trackback URI  Slashdotthis  Diggthis  Del.icio.us
from the if-you-can't-beat-them... dept.

All Points Blog links (1, 2) to ResourceShelf note and AP article on Amazon A9 withdrawing from the webmapping competition. From the article: "Amazon.com Inc.'s A9 search engine has dropped some of its most widely touted features, including the ability to remember everything a user has ever searched for and a service that showed detailed, street-level images of major cities. [...] A9 had put considerable effort into taking detailed, street-level photos of 20 U.S. cities, which people could use to map directions and find businesses. Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. also have invested heavily in such photographic search technologies."

Trackbacks:

• NONE
• NONE
• NONE
• NONE
• NONE
• NONE
• NONE
• NONE
• NONE
• NONE

Related Stories

Amazon Web Mapping Service 4 comments [+]

After Google Local and MS Virtual Earth, scrappad tells us Amazon added a map service to A9. From the article: "This is really awersome, and to be honest its even better than Google Maps and Virtual Earth. Firstly it doesnt make use of tiles, and full images, very similar to the ESRI maps and probaby one of the other biggest things is that, it provides imagery, like real photographs of the streets etc."

A9.com - Mapping at Ground Level [+]

Very Spatial links to a short News8Austin article about Amazon’s A9.com ground level mapping. From the article: "Unlike sites that offer satellite imagery, A9 is doing it all from the ground level. For example, if you search for a restaurant, you can see not only a picture of where you'll be eating, but you can also take a virtual stroll down the block to see what else is around."

Extensive Street-level Mapping Coming Soon? 2 comments [+]

Very Spatial links and discuss to VirtualCity, offering geolocated street-level photos for Toronto and Montreal, Canada, and planning to add more North-American cities soon. The photos are easy to browse over a Google Map interface. From their press release: "Over 4 million photographs were taken of the Toronto area, as well as 3 million more for Montreal, providing visitors a unique perspective on two of Canada’s most popular urban areas. VirtualCity plans to expand into the United States before the end of the year, beginning with Miami and continuing into the New York, Chicago, and Boston markets in 2007." See related story about Amazon A9's previous service of street level mapping and Microsoft's street-side photos.

Industry: Microsoft Acquiring More Street-level Photos [+]

Slashdot discuss Microsoft's acquisition of new street-level photography. Their summary: "Today as we were biking around our neighborhood in a small city we saw a strange vehicle slowly driving around. It appeared to be an SUV, bristling with cameras mounted on the roof, and pointing just about every possible direction. The first time we saw it, all we could see was that it had a sign on the side, something about Windows. The second time we saw it, we stared at it so hard that the driver stopped and we had a chance to ask him what it was all about. He said he was driving around, filming streets, and that there were people doing this all over the world, and getting data from the air too. It was going to be available on the Web. I asked him if this was Microsoft's answer to Google Earth, and he indicated that it was. There seems to be very little about this on the Web, and I found no mention of Microsoft's collection of this sort of detailed street level data. The Windows site appears to be http://preview.local.live.com/, although since I use a Mac it didn't work properly. I'm not sure I want my neighborhood viewable on the Web from ground level. And are they going to edit all the people out? I don't see how they could." See also related stories.

Industry: Google Launches Street View and Mapplets at Where 2.0 2007 9 comments [+]

Slashdot discuss the Google announcement of their new Street View and Mapplets feature. Their summary: "Today at the O'Reilly Where 2.0 Conference Google unveiled two new map features. An O'Reilly blogger describes Street View, which uses 360-degree street-level video from Immersive Media to enable neighborhood walk-throughs in (for now) a few selected areas. The other new feature is Mapplets, which let you embed Google Maps mashups in any Web page. Much more coverage is linked from TechMeme." The GEB covers the launch. Of course, you can read about it from the Official Google Lat Long Blog. See related stories below.

Industry: Amazon Web Services Challenge Features WeoGeo 1 comment [+]

All Points Blog offers coverage with Spatially Adjusted on WeoGeo, a geospatial startup which successfully accessed the finals of the Amazon Web Services Start-Up Challenge. From the contest's website: "WeoGeo creates a one-stop marketplace for mapping using Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3. WeoGeo supplies surveyors, engineers, cartographers, and scientists with the ability to conveniently store, search, and exchange high-resolution CAD and GIS mapping products. Mappers easily list their data for sale and researchers quickly find the data they need." APB also have a podcast with WeoGeo's Paul Bissett and a graphic tour of their product. It's the last day to vote on Amazon's website. Good luck to WeoGeo! Dan Dye, working for WeoGeo is also a contributor to Slashgeo.

Application Domains: Amazon's Kindle Features Hidden Location Tech [+]

Two weeks ago Slashdot mentioned the geolocalisation hidden feature in Amazon's Kindle, their recently released electronic book reader. The Memory Leak blog has a screenshot of Google Maps on Kindle. Part of the Slashdot summary: "[...] His work on the Kindle's Root Shell has revealed some fascinating goodies: 'Among the ones uncovered and described on his blog are a basic photo viewer, a minesweeper game, and most interesting, location technology that uses the Kindle's CDMA networking to pinpoint its position. There also are some basic location-based services that call up a Google Maps view to show where you are and nearby gas stations and restaurants" Here's the related CNET article.

• On Slashdot now... with a Seatle PI article

  (Score:2)

  by Satri (3) on Tuesday October 03, @10:54AM (#1012)
  ( http://alexandreleroux.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday March 17, @04:07PM )

  http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/03/12 41237 [slashdot.org]
  which links to a SeattlePI article [nwsource.com].